DC: The Trump administration announced Saturday evening that it is temporarily freezing billions of dollars of payments to health insurance companies intended to help them manage higher-risk patients, sparking backlash from the industry’s lobbying arm as insurers continue to struggle to adjust to the administration’s repeated attacks on Obamacare.
The federal government provides Obamacare insurers risk adjustment payments, which are supposed to cushion insurers from taking steep loses on high risk patients in the Obamacare marketplace. The government paid out over $10 billion in these in 2017.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service announced the abrupt halt of these payments Saturday evening, citing a February 2018 ruling from the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico that invalidates them.
“We were disappointed by the court’s recent ruling,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. “As a result of this litigation, billions of dollars in risk adjustment payments and collections are now on hold. CMS has asked the court to reconsider its ruling, and hopes for a prompt resolution that allows CMS to prevent more adverse impacts on Americans who receive their insurance in the individual and small group markets.”
The insurance industry is already speaking out against the administration’s decision, calling it a crucial blow during a time when insurance companies are trying to come up with premiums and packages for 2019.
This is an outrage! I demand an investigation! You can’t sell out our seats! The Obama’s have been sitting on this exchange since it was founded! We founded this exchange! It belongs to us! Get those brokers back in here! Turn those machines back on!
Insurance companies bought this crap sandwich, somehow they want us to eat it.
Funny what happens when you pass legislation that gives almost all the power to the Executive Branch (unconstitutionally so) – and then your party loses the election.
$10 BILLION paid out last year. Divide by 365 days. How much money were the insurance companies expecting on Monday morning that has been on hold since Saturday night? Cash flow, baby… Mr. Trump has summoned them to the bargaining table. MAGA.
Isn’t there an insurance agent that comments here?….What’s his take on this issue?…
it was always set up for the insurance companies to lose money … so they’d get out of the business of health care & the gov’t. would step in w/ Single Payer … remember?
now, PDT comes along & pees in their Post Toasties by cutting gov’t subsidies & the insurance co’s don’t like to pass on higher rates for fear of losing market shares
… what do they call gov’t-based ‘capitalism’? …. anyone? … anyone? … bueller? bueller?
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ….The Insurance companies were always positioned to be the middle man in any health care situations. They were gonna get their vigorish no matter what….Now, they might be screwed and have to come up with a viable, affordable and efficient health care insurance plan that works for anybody. It’s gonna be ugly!
The Insurance industry can’t and won’t let it happen as it will be their demise….watch…
I
AAAAaAwwwwwwwwww….
The POOR babies!!!!
You mean to tell me the law that THEY wrote, lobbied for, and got without ANY politician getting to read before passing it is now NOT working the way they wanted it to?
OMG… what is an anti-american blood-sucking demoncrat supposed to do when they cannot stop fighting each other long enough to utilize teamwork to get the job done?
I guess the killary model of buying your power, influence, and votes through dirty money received for allowing babies to be killed in-vetro and then cut up butcher-block style for sale to the highest bidders is really a losing strategy in the end… who woulda thunk it?
Erase every sign this loathsome mutt ever existed. Execute him for high treason then incinerate his carcass, and grind the oily ashes into dust and bury in a unmarked grave under the mound of sludge at a sewage treatment plant.
God has the last word on the death panel.